1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for selecting an image recording medium that matches subject information and managing the associative relationship between the subject information and the selected image recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the medical field, there are widely employed radiation image information recording and reading systems that employ a stimulable phosphor which, when exposed to an applied radiation (X-rays, α-rays, β-rays, γ-rays, electron beams, ultraviolet radiation, or the like), stores a part of the energy of the radiation, and, when subsequently exposed to applied stimulating rays such as a laser beam, visible light, or the like, emits light in proportion to the stored energy of the radiation (see Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 63-253348 for details).
In the radiation image information recording and reading systems, the radiation image information of a subject such as a patient is recorded on a sheet of a stimulable phosphor by an image recording apparatus, and then the sheet is supplied to and read by an image reading apparatus to obtain radiation image information that can easily be processed and managed.
Stimulable phosphor sheets for recording radiation image information are usually available in different sizes and sensitivities depending on imaging conditions including the regions to be imaged, ages, imaging purposes, etc. of patients. The operator of the system chooses a stimulable phosphor sheet that matches the imaging conditions of a patient to be imaged, and operates the system to record a radiation image of the patient on the chosen stimulable phosphor sheet.
Items of radiation image information recorded on respective stimulable phosphor sheets need to be managed in exact association with the patients who have given the radiation image information. According to one proposed system, a registration device disposed near the image recording apparatus registers patient's information including the name, gender, date of birth, ID number, etc. of a patient whose radiation image information is recorded on a stimulable phosphor sheet by the image recording apparatus, and also registers medium information recorded on a bar code attached to the stimulable phosphor sheet. Then, the image reading apparatus reads the bar code on the stimulable phosphor sheet, and seeks a match between the patient information and the medium information of the stimulable phosphor sheet which have been acquired from the registration device (see Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 2002-157585 for details).
The operator has to manually select a stimulable phosphor sheet that matches the imaging conditions of a patient to be imaged from a storage for stimulable phosphor sheets, and supply the selected stimulable phosphor sheet to the image recording apparatus. At this time, the operator may possibly make a mistake in the choice of the stimulable phosphor sheet. For matching the patient information and the medium information of the stimulable phosphor sheet, the operator has to perform a tedious and time-consuming process of reading the bar code on the stimulable phosphor sheet to acquire the medium information thereof before radiation image information is recorded on the stimulable phosphor sheet by the image recording apparatus and the recorded radiation image information is read from the stimulable phosphor sheet by the image reading apparatus.